I am just finishing up a 300 hr mentor ship program with Neil Pearson ( if you don’t know him look him up, his credentials are amazing) on PainCare Science. This program has my whole being lit up and my perspective has shifted.

As a yoga teacher I often felt like I didn’t know enough science on how pain works in the body to truly help people living with chronic pain. A large number of people in North America are living in chronic pain. Pain affects every single part of life, and our nervous systems. The numbers and stories of people living with chronic pain may break your heart open a little ( or a lot) but as a wise person once said : “it’s thru the cracks that the light gets in”. Chances are many of the student’s coming to your yoga classes are living in chronic pain. You can help, yoga is absolutely perfect for changing our nervous systems, brain and our pain.

I have been studying with Neil for the last decade ( we took the SOYA 500 YTT together), whenever he offer’s something I try to make sure I am signed up, and I am sure I will be studying with Neil for the rest of my life. Before I took this mentor ship program I thought I had a pretty good understanding of the nervous system, but my mind has been BLOWN....our nervous systems are AMAZING! Highly complex ( I had no idea!!)and completely adaptable.

What’s needed to help heal is an understanding of how pain works in our bodies (current science), and then to understand how we can create a daily self management pain care plan. Some major parts of this plan are breathe awareness, breath regulation, body awareness, yoga nidra, tension release, movement, and not being scared to move. Not being scared to move and not being scared to teach people living with chronic pain how to move. This involves knowledge, language, compassion, patience, and persistence. Among other things it also involves letting go of old mantra’s that no longer serve us, ie: “it’s been that way forever”, “It’s just age”, “It’s just the way it is”…etc. I’m sure you’ve heard all these when you have checked in with your students.

Neil’s course and the material ( books everyone should own) gives something that many people living with chronic pain have lost: HOPE. In fact I had one client tell me that she’s scared to have hope, because what if this doesn’t work? Those of us who practice yoga know that our life is profoundly affected by it. Our relationships, our career’s, our happiness, our sleep, everything is affected by the aspects of yoga much like chronic pain. Yoga is not a magic pill, it doesn’t happen over night. Yoga is subtle (almost sneaky), you start to notice that things that used to make you angry, don’t anymore. Or that you can sit cross legged….when did that happen!

Neuroplasticity has the word plastic in it, because our nervous systems are like plastic. They can be shaped and moulded into many different things, and if they can be shaped one way they most certainly can be shaped a different way. We are on the fore front of a completely different understanding of our brains and how we can heal. This course is so incredibly exciting! The information I have been sharing with my students has our jaws dropping and our hearts and minds opening. We should all know how our bodies work, how pain works, and how we can help ourselves.I am incredibly grateful to Neil for creating and offering this course, for his constant work to help people living with chronic pain move with more ease and less pain, and most importantly for his ability to offer HOPE and allowing people to feel safe enough to feel it again.

May we all move with less pain and more ease.

Love and light,

Natasha ScottERYT-500, RPYT, RCYT, SOYA lead teacher, owner of Starlit Yoga, and most currently PCYT

Pain Care Yoga is offered as part of our drop-in classes. View our Class Schedule to see when it is offered.